Spread of Catholic hospitals limits reproductive care across the U.S.

Religious doctrine restricts access to abortion and birth control and limits treatment options for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies

By Frances Stead Sellers and Meena Venkataramanan
October 10, 2022

The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion is revealing the growing influence of Catholic health systems and their restrictions on reproductive services including birth control and abortion — even in the diminishing number of states where the procedure remains legal.

Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds, requiring religious doctrine to guide treatment, often to the surprise of patients. Their ascendancy has broad implications for the evolving national battle over reproductive rights beyond abortion, as bans against it take hold in more than a dozen Republican-led states.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/10/abortion-catholic-hospitals-birth-control/

USA – Worried about abortion laws? Catholic hospital mergers also seen as threat to women’s health care

Worried about abortion laws? Catholic hospital mergers also seen as threat to women's health care

Rikha Sharma Rani
Dec 27, 2019

In 1995, Lois Uttley was working as a reproductive rights advocate in New York when the merger of two hospitals in Troy, a city near Albany, caught her off-guard.

One was secular, the other, Catholic. The secular hospital agreed to abide by rules written by Catholic bishops banning certain procedures deemed “immoral” by the church, like abortion, contraception, in-vitro fertilization and tubal ligation.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/12/27/worried-abortion-laws-more-catholic-hospitals-also-seen-threat/4269242002/